When Internet Search Engine Optimization Gets Shady: J.C. Penney’s Blunder

When you type in “Samonsite carry on luggage” into Google, you’d expect that Samonsite.com would be the first result. The New York Times reports that for months J.C. Penney’s topped Samonsite in this search. And this wasn’t the only term that they bested their competitors in – “skinny jeans,” “furniture,” “dresses” and “area rugs” were also among the internet search engine optimization keywords that J.C. Penney dominated on Google. 

 The New York Times launched an investigation into this internet search engine optimization and found that J.C. Penney used “black hat” optimization in which someone paid to have links placed all over the web that guided web-users back to JCPenney.com. Since linking helps to measure popularity, this practice helped give J.C. Penney an edge over competitors and even led to increased sales.

 These tactics of internet search engine optimization found 2,015 pages that linked to the “dresses” page of J.C. Penney. And the New York Times says while some of these pages were related to “dresses,” links were also found sites with no relation to the term such as “myflhomebuyer.com” and “nuclear.engineeringaddict.com.”

Although these practices are not illegal, Google considers it to be cheating and penalizes those who are caught in the act of this type of shady internet search engine optimization. The New York Times reports that within a matter of two hours, J.C. Penney’s went from being the top search result for “living room furniture” to the 68^th.

While J.C. Penney’s denied paying for this use of SEO, they did fire their search engine consulting firm according to the New York Times.

Avoid J.C. Penney’s blunder and do not select a marketing firm that practices “black hat” SEO.

Let’s hope Google’s crackdown prevents J.C. Penney’s from beating us as the top result for “Quez Media Marketing.” We think we deserve that one.